Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Wallpaper in GIMP

The festive Season is well upon us and the celebrations are only a few short weeks away, so in preparation this tutorial will help motivate you for the Holidays and produce an elegant wallpaper!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Wallpaper

1. Downloads

Firstly you’ll need a few Icons and a fresh font!
I have used the font Museo, which can be downloaded here (I’m using the 500 and 700, both are free, just add to cart and checkout, it will be emailed)!
Put text in your main fonts folder for your computer, or it may do that for you when you open it!

Museo Font

I also downloaded these brilliant Christmas Icons from Icon Archive!
*Right Click* > Save Image As! Select the 256 x 256 .png:

Santa Hat Icon

Gift Icon

Fireworks Icon

Star Icon

2. Making your Background

Create a new document in GIMP, settings: 1600 x 1000, 72 pi, Transparency:
Fill with Black using the Paint Bucket Tool:
Now to create a cotton or linen like texture use HSV Noise, go Filters –> Noise –> HSV Noise
Apply HSV Noise twice – Shift + F

Making your Background

Duplicate that layer, name it ‘BG 2‘
On BG 2, go Filters –> Blur –> Motion Blur, settings: Linear, Angle: 0, Length: 50:
Repeat this for BG 1, but change Angle to 90
Set BG 2 layer mode to Multiply:
Brighten up BG 2, go Colors –> Brightness-Contrast, by 50:

Motion Blur

3. Adding Text

Using the font Museo Semi-Bold at 251 px make the different layers:
My separate words/layers: Merry, Christmas, &, Happy, New Year:

Adding Text

4. Text Border

On your text layer *Right Click* > Text to Selection
Grow the selection, go Select –> Grow: 2px
Create a new layer ‘text layer – Drop‘
Fill selection with a grey colour: 828282
Drag the ‘-Drop’ layer below the text layer original in the Layers panel:
Repeat for all the other layers:

Text Border

5. Adding Icons

Using the Icons you downloaded in step 1. place them around your text:
Import: File –> Open as Layers… (Ctrl + Alt +A):
You may need to scale some to fit, go Layer –> Scale Layer
If scaling up I would use 450px, but experiment to find the most suitable!
Note: For the Fireworks Icon I used the Horizontal Flip Tool (Image->Transform->Flip Horizontally)!

Adding Icons

6. Vignetting

Create a new layer ‘Vignetting‘:
Using the Gradient Tool with settings: FG Only: Black, Reverse, Radial:
Stroke from the centre out to make a vignetting effect.
Set ‘Vignetting’ layer mode to Soft Light:

Vignetting

That’s It!

Download the XCF and Wallpaper here!

You may download the XCF: merry-Christmas-happy-new-year-wallpaper-in-gimp.xcf.zip (3.9 mb)

You can also download the jpg for your wallpaper: Christmas-new-year-gimp-wallpaper.jpg (885 kb, *Right Click* > Save Image As)

Written by Mike

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Michael Scott is the publisher and photographer behind Scott Photographics! He is very passionate about his photography and enjoys sharing the best of his experiences for others to enjoy too! Contact Mike via email!

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